Kisqali Price disparity

norah2024

I am 62 years old lady newly diagnosed with mets to bone beast cancer,

I lost my insurance coverage for the remaining of this year because I reached the limit, and I will have to buy the medication out of my own pocket which is very expensive.

but I was wondering, if i can buy the medication from other places since the price varies from country to country? Has anyone had such an experience?

For example Kisqali prices vary greatly from country to country and I was wondering if the effectiveness of the medication is the same when the price is $10,000 per box in one country while the same medication is sold for less than $1,000 in another part of the world.

I searched a lot on the Internet to find out if the effectiveness of the drug is the same, since there is no generic version of this drug.

But I am still hesitant and a bit apprehensive about believing the huge price difference for the same drug.

I bought the medicine for this month at its high price with my own money but I don't know what I will do next month.

Any advice.?

moderators

@norah2024, we're so sorry you're going through this, especially with the added stress of dealing with insurance and medication costs.

We have some resources on our main site that might help you find information on programs that offer support for medication costs, insurance issues, etc. Check it out here:

Covering the Costs of Your Breast Cancer Care

Financial Issues

We really hope you can find a solution soon and get the assistance you need.

Sincerely,

The Mods

maggie15

Hi @norah74 , You can try reaching out to the manufacturer to see if you are eligible for assistance in your circumstances. Often there is somebody in the oncologist's office who will look into options to help you afford your meds so let them know about your situation.

The overseas medications are often the same but you have to be careful since there are counterfeit drugs out there. Most of the time you can't get the meds from reliable sources by mail order (and customs sometimes confiscates them because of current regulations.) I used to live in Canada and now live within a day's drive so to pay for an expensive lung drug that my insurance wouldn't cover I booked an appointment with a private physician in Canada and brought my medical records with me. That doctor prescribed the drug which I picked up from a local pharmacy. I had to pay for the doctor's appointment and day trips across the border to the pharmacy every month but the cost ($500) was way less than the $14,000 a month I would have been charged. I couldn't get extra help from the manufacturer since the funding had run out very early in the year.

Because of the high cost of medical treatment without insurance there is a medical tourism industry but you need to research thoroughly. When my daughter used up her insurance benefits for fertility treatment she ended out traveling to Greece. Her doctor there was licensed in and had worked at a good hospital in NYC and had moved abroad to care for his aging parents. Two round trip flights, several weeks AirBnb and all of her medical costs were a quarter of what she would have paid out of pocket in NYC. She's due at the beginning of March.

Hopefully your doctor's office can help you get the meds you need. The international options aren't easy but sometimes are worth pursuing. Good luck!

norah2024

thank you @maggie15

Actually this is exactly what I wanted to know. I wanted to know if someone had gone through the same experience of getting the medicine from another country at a much lower cost.

As for reaching the manufacturer I tried, but I am not Eligible for the program because I do not reside in USA.

I normally do not trust online medicine, and my husband is offering options from countries neighboring my place of residence.These options at a fifth of the price, but I am still not comfortable with the medicine source (Countries like Egypt, India and Turkey)

and this causes me constant anxiety which sometimes prevents me from sleeping.

maggie15

Hi @norah74 , I don’t have personal knowledge of this but I have heard (on a disease specific discussion site) of someone buying that expensive pulmonary medicine from a cheap source in India and paying an analytical chemist to test it and make sure that it was equivalent to the real drug. He saved one of his original tablets for the chemical analysis comparison. Someone else investigated which Indian company supplied that drug to New Zealand which provides reliable medical care and ordered from the same source. It’s a shame that patients have to resort to such practices but understandable that they do. I hope you can find a workaround.

norah2024

thanks again @maggie15

Your reply really helped me, I really appreciate that.
I knew now that I am not the only one who searches carefully before buying a medicine that means a lot to our survival.